Pipap Catastrophe

I was diagnosed with both obstructive and central sleep apnea. I feel like I sleep fine, but the study found otherwise. I got my fitting for a bipap from resmed, and I remember the tech telling me the prescription was for a high pressure. I wear it the first night, and after two hours I woke up with severe chest pain. I got up about 1:30am and tried walking it off for a couple hours, but only got worse. I then began vomiting and massive cold sweats. At that point I woke my wife and told I needed to go to the ER for fears of a heart attack. Had I woken up like that without this machine being part off the equation, I would have gone immediately. By the time the loaded me on the ambulance, the pain was so severe all I can remember was squirming on the gerny and moaning uncontrollably. When I got to the ER, the jumped on it and started doing test. The nurse gave me morphine and it didn't touch it. A second dose simply knocked me out. Long story short, there was no heart issues or infections. Something about that damn machine put me in the hospital for three days. My lungs still hurt. Anyone else had an issue like this?

That was a bad reaction, but my chest hurt for a couple of weeks as the muscles got used to working with the pressure (apap 15/20 and a lot of nights I maxed out most of the time). My suggestion and what I would do of I started over, is to start with a lower pressure and build up. out of curiosity what was the difference between the low and high pressure (PS= pressure support)? I think that can also affect how much ventilation/lung expansion you get.

ajack wrote:my chest hurt for a couple of weeks as the muscles got used to working with the pressure

+1

ajack wrote:My suggestion and what I would do of I started over, is to start with a lower pressure and build up

+1
but be careful about not going so low you don't treat any apneas.

But you really need to contact your doc too to let them know this is not working for you. Please do say what make & model bipap you have cuz for centrals you should have a specific model and they are tricky to setup esp. if your RT is not familiar with it.

Many times your insurance will not approve this special bipap until you have failed the less expensive treatment first. So also let us know which insurance you have.

So that is insurance Co.
bipap make & model info needed

I think my b._ detector went off, I don't think they would load you with morphine before they found out the problem. What does a Pipap pump? How high was the pressure, most BiPAPS are 25 cm water max, 30 for the old better ones. Jim

One thing you might want to ask about - too often patients (and their not-well-informed doctors) think that every little 'event' that's not obstructive, or that's non-breathing right around the time you go to sleep and before waking up is a 'central', but in fact those usually turn out of just be what we call sleep-wake 'junk' and are not at all worrisome. What you want to worry about are a lot of 'clear airway' events all night long, often in bunches, and those may be true 'centrals'... but keep in mind what I said about the others - the handful when just dozing off and prior to waking... they're not real centrals and not worth fussing about.

Thanks for the feedback, and for the guy with the BS meter, you must be the forum a$$. This is a medical forum, why on earth would anyone embellish about this stuff. The unit is a Resmed 10 aircurve10. I don't know much about this, but the pressure reads 12.5 in the sleep report area.

Hookvader wrote:I remember the tech telling me the prescription was for a high pressure.
I wear it the first night, and after two hours I woke up with severe chest pain.
[..]
Long story short, there was no heart issues or infections.

sounds like a severe Aerophagia. You might want to experiment with lowering the pressure to the point this stops or gets acceptable and / or increase the pressure support.